1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to apparatus for and a method of cleaning the surface of semiconductor wafers to remove and measure levels of metallic contamination. More particularly, the apparatus uses a rotating plate with wafer stand-offs and a motor controller to control the speed of the rotation while a solution droplet is administered through a probe onto the wafer by an operator, who moves a pivot arm attached to the probe about 1.5 degrees until all of the wafer is touched by the droplet in a spinoff-like process. The surface tension of the liquid trapped in the bottom of the probe is higher than the surface tension of the etched silicon wafer, and the VPD (vapor phase decomposition) metals collecting solution drop adheres to the bottom of the probe and slides over the bare silicon surface, provided a sufficient gap separates the tip of the probe and the wafer. The solution drop may later be analyzed by mass spectrometry.
2. Description of Prior Art
The advances in semiconductor technology has led to a continual decrease in the size of these electrical devices along with a concomitant need to impose stricter limits on the tendency for increases in electrical current leakage with corresponding decreases in size.
It has been found that the leakage paths are essentially through minority carrier recombination at metallically contaminated sites in the vicinity of the electrical junctions within the device or sub-device cell structure. These paths are detrimentally increased in size when the wafer is contaminated with metals.
Nevertheless, improvements in the manufacture of reduced sized silicon wafers and electrical devices includes a large number of individual processing steps which unfortunately contribute to metal contamination.
An apparatus for and method of cleaning semiconductor wafers is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,217,925. The apparatus comprises:
an ice maker to provide frozen micro-particles;
a cleaning chamber having a bottom portion including a main outlet;
a holding means for holding a semiconductor wafer in the cleaning chamber;
an injection nozzle for injecting the frozen microparticles into the cleaning chamber towards a semiconductor wafer;
an exhaust duct having a sub-outlet and connected to the main outlet of the cleaning chamber; and
an exhaust blower connected to both the main outlet and the sub-outlet.
An electrostatic apparatus for removing particles from semiconductor wafers is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,350,428. The apparatus comprises a particle removing means contactable with the edge of at least one semiconductor wafer which removes particles from the wafers and which inhibits the return of the particles to the wafers, wherein the particle removing means comprises a non-metallic electrostatically charged material.
U.S. Pat. 4,231,809 disclose a method of removing impurity metals from semiconductor devices. The process comprises:
a process for gettering transition metal impurities from a body of silicon semiconductor material by heating the body in an ambient which includes hydrogen chloride and oxygen the improvement comprising the ambient contains oxygen in a percentage by volume of from about 0.5 and 1.0 to grow a silicon oxide film on the surface of the body to a thickness of not more than about 150 Angstroms.
A method for detecting sources of contamination in silicon using a contamination monitor is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,418,172. The method comprises:
(a) exposing a contamination monitor wafer having an average minority carrier lifetime greater than about 250 microseconds to the apparatus, fluid or process step,
(b) heating the contamination monitor wafer to a temperature of a least 600xc2x0 C. simultaneous with or subsequent to exposing the wafer to the apparatus, fluid or process step, and
(c) determining the minority carrier lifetime or minority carrier diffusion length of the contamination monitor wafer after the wafer has been heated as set forth in step (b) to detect the metal contamination, the contamination monitor wafer having an oxygen precipitate density of less than 108 oxygen precipitates per cubic centimeter after being heated as set forth in step (b).
U.S. Pat. No. 6,100,167 disclose a process for removal of copper from boron doped silicon wafers. The process comprises:
polishing a surface of a boron doped wafer, the polishing process contributing copper to the surface and interior of the wafer,
annealing the polished wafer at a temperature of at least about 75xc2x0 C., for at least about 30 seconds to increase the concentration of copper on the polished surface of the wafer and decrease the concentration of copper in the interior of the wafer, and cleaning the polished surface of the annealed wafer to reduce the concentration of copper thereon, the concentration of copper in the interior of the annealed and cleaned wafer being reduced during the annealing step such that the concentration of copper on the polished and cleaned surface of the wafer will not increase by a factor of more than two upon storage of the wafer at room temperature for a period of 5 months.
There is a need in the art of removing metal contamination from the surface of semiconductor wafers of increasingly smaller sizes to simplify the process of collecting and quantifying metallic contamination.
There is a further need when collecting metallic contamination to eliminate the problem of drops falling off of the wafer during manual scanning with a vacuum wand.
When collecting metallic contamination from the surface of semiconductor wafers, additional needs are:
to accelerate the scanning process from about 5 minutes to about 1.5 minutes;
standardize the scanning process and drop path on the wafer; increase the percentage of area scanned on the wafer to 100%;
eliminate the introduction of errors and contamination by poor operator technique during manual hand-held scanning;
to be able to consistently collect metallic impurities on wafers repeatedly by different operators; and
to alleviate operator fatigue during long VPD sessions.
One object of the present invention is to provide apparatus for and a method of collecting and later quantifying metallic contamination on semiconductor wafers by using a rotating plate with wafer stand-offs and a motor controller to control the speed of rotation, while a solution droplet is administered through a probe onto the wafer by an operator, who moves a pivot arm attached to the probe about 1.5 degrees until all or 100% of the wafer is touched by the droplet in a spin off-like process.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a solution of the metallic contaminants from the wafer using the probe in which the surface tension of the liquid trapped in the bottom of the probe is higher than the surface tension of the etched silicon wafer, thereby allowing the VPD metals collecting solution drop to adhere to the bottom of the probe and slide completely over the silicon surface prior to pipetting and analyzing the droplets.
A further object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus for collection and quantification of metallic contamination on a wafer that consists of:
a motor controller with an adjustable speed knob;
a platform mounted above the motor controller;
a rotateable plate with a wafer stand-off pivotably mounted above the platform;
a shaft mounted on said platform attached to a drop probe by a pivot arm, said drop probe extending downward and over said rotateable plate with wafer stand-offs at a sufficient distance above the wafer so that, when a solution droplet suspended from the probe inscribes a concentric circle on said wafer, due to the higher surface tension of the material holding the solution droplet at the bottom of the probe over that of the wafer, the VPD metals collecting solution drop will adhere to the bottom of the probe and slide over the silicon surface without risk of dropping off and clean off trace metals.
The improved process of the invention for treating a wafer surface during manufacture to remove metallic contaminants without the use of robotics and without risk of scanning droplets falling from the wafer in a faster time than with a manual process using a vacuum wand, is accomplished by:
a) positioning a wafer on a rotating plate pivotably mounted above a platform;
b) contacting the wafer with a metals scanning solution droplet from the tip of a hollow drop probe, the solution being adhered in a bottom portion of the drop probe above the wafer in a material of a surface tension sufficiently higher than the surface tension on said wafer, the drop probe being pivotably connected to a pivot arm which upon pivoting or turning one notch enables droplet sweeping of metal contaminants on a concentric circle on the wafer on the rotating plate;
c) successively turning the pivot arm a sufficient number of notches to enable completion of wafer droplet sweepings through concentric circles to reach the edge of the wafer until all of the surface of the wafer is swept; and
d) pipetting the solution droplet containing metal contaminants out of the probe for analysis.